Books books books!

I may be able to come in contact with certain books sometime in the near future. Now I need suggestions. I am looking for a game programming book that is for mac(don't care what language it is, as long as it is newbie oriented). I would also like a Cocoa/Objective C book. So which ones are the best?

Aaron Hillegas' book is good for learning Cocoa/Objective-C.http://www.amazon.com/Cocoa-Programming-...927&sr=8-1
You seem to have made a good start on that already though so you may find that you already know quite a lot of it. Probably the first seven or eight chapters I'd imagine.
Do you have any idea what area of game programming you'd like a book on? Graphics? Physics? Engine structure? 3D maths?

Thanks for replying! I believe Pangea's book was made available free as an ebook a while back.
So it turns out I have a budget of $35.

Quote: Do you have any idea what area of game programming you'd like a book on? Graphics? Physics? Engine structure? 3D maths?

Make Bugdom in 3 easy steps?

I was thinking along the lines of a "Making a game with OpenGL for beginners".

Anyway thanks again,

-LG

P.S. While we're on the topic of books, what kind of math will I need to be able to do to get into game programming? I am finishing off Elementary Algebra(Harold Jacobs) after which I intend to move on to Geometry, and then Algebra 2. Will I need to learn anything beyond that? (Calculus, Trig, etc).

It depends on what kind of game you are making. When you start taking physics in school, you'll see that it uses a lot of precalc/calculus, so if you were to code your own physics, you would need to be able to work with that. However, there are physics libraries that can do a lot of this for you. Geometry and working with matrices comes up as well. Just be careful not to get too far ahead of yourself, i.e. there is no sense worrying about Calculus if you don't know Algebra 2. If you find yourself needing to express something mathematically and you just really have no idea how to do it, then you can ask and someone can either help you directly or point you in the right direction.

But to more generally answer you question, learn as much math as you can. Never know when you will need it. I guess thats true of all things. Learning is good.

Strictly speaking, you don't need to know any math to get into game programming. As long as you take the time to understand things as you go along, you can figure out concepts as you need them and skip a lot of academic nonsense. If the academic nonsense is useful to you and you can make sense of it, though, ignore me.

I agree with ThemsAllTook -- math isn't strictly required to get into game programming, but anything you do learn will definitely help. I would say there are a few things that are super handy to know though. Here are a few off the top of my head:

- The mighty triangle. You should know everything you can learn about triangles. Specifically, it is nice to know some basic trigonometry (which you will probably learn in basic geometry, so pay close attention to triangle stuff!). Learn sine cosine and tangent and their inverses so you know how they all relate.
- Relating to the triangle, learn how to work with degrees and radians.
- Learn a little about cartesian coordinates in 2d and 3d (not hard at all), and learn a little about slope. Should get this in algebra.
- Distance formula (simple, short, easy to understand, but oh so handy). I learned this in algebra 2, but it can be learned any time.
- Learn how to read and do some basic binary math so you know what's up with it. No need to master.
- Learn to read hexadecimal. Very important for any computer programming.
- Basic vectors and associated operations. Probably learn that in any game programming book though.
- Matrix operations are very nice to learn how to use but you don't need to really know the math behind them, just follow the recipe.

I have hardly ever specifically approached a programming problem with anything more than trigonometry and analytic geometry (precalculus). I think the craziest math out there that is routinely used in games is maybe matrices and quaternions. Matrices goes under the linear algebra category. I wasn't paying much attention to that in college and I wish I had.